Friday, February 22, 2013

the "death sandwich"

Passed along this morning...

Embedded in an article entitled, "Biblical scholars claim to discover 'Genesis death sandwich'" is a list of "The 10 Weirdest Ways We Deal With The Dead."

The relevance of the "weirdest ways" to the article in which it appears lies in the fact that the death sandwich refers to the technique of including bad news (death, from a Christian point of view) between the upbeat slices of white bread of the good ... meaning life. Death and life are opposites within this framework.

It's not clear to me how surprising I should find any of this since it is a technique used by any number of spiritual persuasions -- the technique of saying, "Yup, there's bad news, but let me crank up the good stuff that makes the bad stuff seem less onerous."

I do like the notion of a "death sandwich" though.

And I do remember the Buddhist Christmas Humphreys approximate observation that, "The opposite of life is not death. The opposite of death is birth. The opposite of life is form."

2 comments:

  1. Back in the day I attended a 'sesshin' led by Christmas Humphreys.
    During one period for limb stretching and cramp easing someone asked a question.
    Humphries looked him over and said" John, I know that you will not be happy unless I answer in terms of the three of these and the five of those so I am going to ignore the question ".

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  2. Thanks Peter ... that's a keeper.

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